


A Little More Time

by unfolded73



Series: The Lostverse [14]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Implied Ten/Jack, Old Age, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 14:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10698597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfolded73/pseuds/unfolded73
Summary: Originally published August 2008.The Doctor takes care of Rose at the end of her life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> What I said at the time: I believe I specifically said to a commenter on To Experience Everything that writing something along these lines would be "too sad" and that it would "break me." Set in the Lostverse in late 2072 or early 2073. And for anyone who's read the Epilogue to Still Lost, you know what that means. Pay attention to the character death warning please.

“Why do I need this?” Rose asked a little petulantly, tugging at the IV. A needle sat nestled in the top of her hand, amongst blue veins, in skin no longer supple.

“Because you aren’t eating enough,” he said, adjusting the flow.

“I don’t feel hungry.”

“I know. So you need this.” He tapped the line with the flick of a finger.

“Where did Jack go? I haven’t seen him today.”

The Doctor glanced at her, then back at the monitors that were keeping track of her vital signs. “I sent him home.”

“Well, what did you do that for? He’d just arrived.”

“He was here a week.”

She waved a hand weakly in the air. “Whatever. You shouldn’t have sent him away.”

“Do you want him? I’ll call him back if you want to talk to him.”

“It’s not that, you prawn. I want him here for you.” Rose coughed, a low, wheezing cough, and the Doctor watched her carefully.

“I don’t need Jack,” he said when the cough abated, and sat down on the bed next to her.

“Yes, you do. You need someone.”

“I have someone,” he said, taking her hand.

“I mean after I go,” she said.

He shook his head. “You aren’t going anywhere.”

Rose snorted. “Did you at least fuck him while he was here?”

The Doctor pointed a finger at her. “You are a dirty old woman, d’you know that?”

“Yes. Well, did you?”

“No.”

“No? Dammit, Doctor, what am I going to fantasize about during all these long, boring hours in bed if I can’t even imagine that Jack is buggering you in the guestroom?”

“You can imagine that whether or not it’s actually happening.”

She sighed. “I suppose so. Still, would do you good.”

“Rose, I’m a Time Lord. I do not require sex to keep functioning the way you humans do. I can go centuries without it if I choose to.”

She reached up and touched his face. “Perhaps so, but you need physical affection.”

He smiled and nuzzled her papery hand. “Good thing you’re giving me some then.”

“I can’t do what I used to. I can’t take care of you the way I used to. Jack could.”

“I don’t need anyone to take care of me,” he responded quickly, and Rose shook her head, frustrated. There was no talking to him when he got like this.

She pushed back into the pillows, cataloguing her various aches and pains. “I hate being old.”

“I know.”

“You’re still so handsome. Just look at you. I’m … 87 – see, I almost forgot my own age there for a moment. I’m 87, and you don’t look a day over 55.”

“I’m 968.”

“Show off.”

“Yes, well.” He stood up and turned toward the door. “Try to get some sleep.”

“At some point, you’re going to have to stop this,” she said.

“What?”

“Keeping me alive.”

“Don’t say that. I’m not keeping you alive. You’re keeping you alive.”

“Not so well anymore.”

He sat on the bed next to her again. “You’re going to be all right. We’ve been through worse than this, you and I.”

“Sure. I had cancer, and you cured it. You can’t cure old age.”

“There are things I could do, if you would let me—”

“Don’t. My mind in some obscene shell; it’s perverse. You don’t want that, and neither do I.”

He looked down at the bed. “No.”

“You’ve got to let me go, Doctor.”

His eyes, when they finally met hers, were deep wells of anguish. “Not yet. Please, Rose, just a little more time. Not yet.”

Rose tried to smile. “A little more time.”

He kissed her cheek gently. “I love you.”

“Quite right too.”

He barked a mirthless laugh and stood again. “Rest.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, saluting him.

Rose closed her eyes and tried to sleep. She pretended she couldn’t hear his creaking sobs in the next room.


	2. Chapter 2

She made him hire a nurse. He protested, until she pointed out that she wanted to be spared the indignity of being carried to the toilet by her husband. He assured her that he didn’t care about that, but she said she did.

“I used to be the very definition of sexy to you, Doctor. It’s bad enough that you have to see me shrivelled and brittle like this. Let’s not have you wiping my bum as well.”

For her, he agreed.

The nurse was named Ellen, and he supposed she was adequate to her tasks. He allowed her to do as little as he could get away with. She was kind to Rose, and joked with her about her young husband, which made Rose laugh. Rose spun stories for Ellen about how she had been fifty and had seduced him at the tender age of eighteen. Rose had already realized that as an elderly person, she was allowed to have a filthy mouth and no one would say boo about it, so she told ribald tales to Ellen about how she had taught him everything he knew about sex. The Doctor arched an eyebrow and smirked and said nothing to gainsay her. She grinned and winked at him behind Ellen’s back.

Days seemed to pass at a breakneck pace, even though nothing of consequence was happening. He wandered the grounds of the house they had been sharing since the day they had retired from the TARDIS. He tended the garden; it had been Rose’s garden to look after, but now that she couldn’t any longer, he felt like he must. He read. And of course, he took care of Rose.

All of the monitoring equipment told the same story: she was failing. There was no one thing that he could focus on, that he could fix, because every system seemed to be winding down. Worse, Rose seemed to just have accepted it, that the end of her life was near, and sometimes it made him so angry that he felt like shaking her. Other times, he just wanted to lie down and die right along with her.

Jenny arrived one day in the TARDIS, and he saw Rose’s fate on Jenny’s face the moment she walked into their bedroom for a visit. She sat and made happy small talk with Rose for several minutes. The moment he was alone with his daughter, she fell into his arms.

“How much longer do you think she has, Dad?” There were tears in her voice.

He just shook his head. To make a guess aloud would be to accept it. He wasn’t ready to accept it.

“Has Jack been to visit?”

“For a while, several weeks ago.”

“I think he should come back soon, don’t you?” She pulled out of his embrace and looked at him. “Please don’t try to bear this on your own.”

The next morning Rose insisted on seeing the TARDIS, so against his better judgment, he bundled her into a wheelchair and took her into the back garden where the TARDIS was parked. When he couldn’t fit the chair through the doors, he lifted his wife – she seemed to weigh nothing at all – and carried her into the control room. They sat together on the captain’s chair, watching the time rotor slowly pulse. 

“She’s so beautiful,” Rose murmured. “I had almost forgotten how beautiful she is, your ship.”

“That she is.”

“Jenny’s taking good care of her.”

“Wellll … passably good care, I suppose.”

“And this chair.” Rose laughed softly. “How many times did we have sex on this chair?”

He smiled. “More than anyone wants to know about, particularly my daughter.”

She put her head on his shoulder. “I’m tired.”

“I’ll take you back to bed,” he said, standing up.

“Wait. Just … one more minute.”

When he finally carried her out, Rose reached out and touched the door. He paused for her, letting her run her hand up and down the painted blue wood. “Goodbye, girl,” she whispered, and it was all he could do not to collapse to his knees. He set her gently in the chair and took her back into the house.

 

*** 

 

The Doctor seemed resigned when he opened the door to see Jack on the doorstep once again. He beckoned Jack inside and led him into the kitchen, where he started the process of making tea. “What brings you?” the Doctor asked.

“Jenny told me it was … that I needed to come.”

“Jenny meddles too much,” the Doctor said as he turned to fetch mugs down from the cabinet.

“She’s worried about you. Says you aren’t taking care of yourself. Looking at you, I’d say she’s right.”

“I’m fine. I’m not the one in this house who’s dying.” He closed his mouth with an audible click, a look of shock on his face, as if saying it out loud would make it come to pass. “Rose will be pleased to see you,” he rushed on hurriedly. “She was cross with me for sending you home before.”

Jack smiled. “Well, she’s got a thing for me, you know.”

The Doctor laughed briefly. “Actually, she was hoping that you and I … well. Either she wants me to seek solace in the arms of someone else, or she just wanted to watch us, for old time's sake.”

“Both, I’d wager.”

He met Jack’s eyes. “You understand why I can’t.”

Jack nodded. “Doesn’t mean I can’t help you. I first made the offer sixty years ago, and it still stands.”

The Doctor scrubbed a hand over his face. “I know.”

“If you really want me to go, I’ll go.”

After a long moment, the Doctor shook his head. “No, you can stay. Why don’t you go look in on Rose.”

“I’ll do that, and then I’m going to cook you a big meal, and you’re going to eat it. Got that?” He pointed a threatening finger at the Doctor, who nodded absently.

Jack opened the bedroom door slowly to see Rose sleeping. Or he thought she was sleeping, until she cracked an eye open and grinned at him. “I thought that was your voice I heard,” she said.

“Hey, gorgeous.” Jack pulled a chair over to the side of the bed and sat down. 

Rose laughed. “Gorgeous? Wow, Jack, your standards have gotten pretty low.”

“You’ll always be gorgeous to me, Rose.”

“How long are you staying?”

“As long as I’m needed,” Jack said.

“Good. He’s not handling this well.”

“Can you blame him?”

“He knew this would happen eventually. It’s not like I got old all of a sudden.”

“I think it’s easy to understand intellectually that you are going to have to watch the person you love die. It’s quite another to actually do it. To walk in here every day and see the truth of it staring you in the face.”

“I think I might have died weeks ago if it weren’t for him. I don’t want to leave him alone.”

“He won’t be alone.”

“Promise me, Jack. Promise me that you won’t let him shut everyone else out. He can be very good at that. He’s out of practice, maybe, but he can be very good at it.”

“I know. I promise.”

 

***

 

“The nurse could take care of that,” she said, and was rewarded to see that she had startled him. He had clearly thought she was asleep.

“What?” he asked, sounding irritable. The reflection of the monitors flashed off his glasses in the dim light.

“Ellen would do that if you asked her,” she said, vaguely indicating the IV bag that he was swapping.

“Why would I do that?” 

She shrugged. Even shrugging hurt. “So you wouldn’t have to fuss with the routine things in the middle of the night.”

“Rose, darling, I don’t sleep.”

“That’s clear enough. When was the last time you did?” It was a question that he clearly didn’t want to answer, so he kept silent. “Doctor?” she asked, deciding to press him.

“It’s been a few weeks,” he finally admitted.

“You need to sleep.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to miss … I can’t.”

“All right,” she said in a voice that was stronger by far than she felt. “Come here.” She patted the empty side of their bed.

He huffed. “You aren’t strong enough.”

“I’m not proposing hot sex, Doctor, would that I could. I’m proposing you sleep here next to me.”

“I know you’re not proposing … I just don’t want to bother you. You need rest.”

“Please,” she said, and she saw the moment that he gave in, his shoulders slumping. He pulled off his glasses and set them on the nightstand, then stripped down to a T-shirt and his underwear. She watched him cautiously climb into bed, trying not to jostle her, knowing that everything pained her. He mostly succeeded, and she didn’t complain. Reaching over with her hand that wasn’t attached to the IV, she grasped his. “Isn’t this better?”

He rolled over and looked at her. “Yes.”

“All these years we’ve shared a bed, it doesn’t seem right, you not being here with me at the end—”

“Stop. Don’t say it.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.” She squeezed his hand, ignoring the ache in her joints. “I love you.”

“I love you, Rose.”

She watched him relax, watched his eyes flutter closed, watched him drift off to sleep, a sight that even in 68 years together she had only seen a handful of times. Her hand stayed in his until morning.


	3. Chapter 3

Jack shuffled the cards and dealt out another hand. “You look better today.”

“I slept,” the Doctor responded.

“Where’d Jenny take off to?”

“She’s been travelling with this bloke, Jeremy.” The Doctor picked up his cards and regarded them through his specs. “From the 25th century, I think she said. She took him to visit his family for a bit.”

“Ah. Are the two of them … a couple?”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think so. Why?”

“No reason, just curious.”

“Jack, she’s my _daughter_.”

Jack grinned. “I said I was just curious! I mean, she _is_ beautiful—”

“I am not above telling her that you and I have had sex in order to put her off of you completely, you know.”

“Fine, fine. Draw a card.” They played in silence for several minutes. “I looked in on Rose this morning. She seemed tired.”

“That’s a bit of an understatement.”

Jack watched him. “I know. I just didn’t want to—”

“You can say it. It’s time we all said it. Rose is dying, and it won’t be long now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Let’s just play.”

The rest of the hand passed in silence, and then suddenly the Doctor threw his cards down on the table. “In my darkest moments, I have caught myself wishing that I’d never met her. Or wishing that I had never gotten her back from that parallel world.”

“But you’ve made each other so happy for all these years. Your life would have been so much poorer without her.”

“I know. I know that, and I didn’t say it was rational. But I just hate how much this hurts. It’s like it’s hard to breathe.” He stood up and began to pace the room. “I try to imagine what I’m going to do after. Am I going to go out there, and get in the TARDIS, and go back to my old life, as if … as if she never existed? As if this was just some detour, in the grand scheme of things? The thought of it makes me physically ill.”

“It won’t be like she never existed. We’ll remember her.” Jack stood up and approached him. “And there are people all over the universe, at so many points in history, who remember her, who are better for having met her, who are _alive_ because of her.” He pulled the Doctor into an embrace. “She won’t be forgotten.”

They stood together in silence for a long time. “I’m never doing this again,” the Doctor said.

“What, hugging me? Or falling in love?”

“Perhaps either, but I meant falling in love,” he said, pulling away from Jack.

“Not exactly something you planned to do this time, was it?” 

“No. No, I guess it wasn’t.” 

 

*** 

 

The Doctor sat by her bedside in the darkening room, his hand covering hers on top of the covers. She drifted, in and out of sleep, in and out of consciousness. He watched her chest rise and fall, counting each breath.

Rose stirred, waking him from a reverie about days long gone. “Take me out to the garden,” she whispered.

“The sun has gone down, it’ll be too cold for you out there,” he responded. He watched the beat of her single heart on the monitor. Slow, steady pulses.

He felt her hand turn and grip his. “Please, Doctor. I need … just please. Take me to the garden.”

The brown eyes that met his were clear. He could do no other but obey. He disconnected the IV and the monitors, setting each line carefully aside.

He carried her in his arms as he had into the TARDIS. He could have used the wheelchair, but something told him not to. There was a wide, reclining lawn chair in the back yard that they had shared on many an evening, looking up at the stars, and it was onto this chair that he deposited her. Ducking back into the house briefly, he returned with an armload of blankets, which he carefully tucked around her.

“Snug as a bug,” she rasped, already looking up at the clear, night sky. He settled next to her, letting his eyes follow the same path. They were far enough from any cities that there were no lights to interfere, and the sky sparkled with thousands of stars.

“It wasn’t the fact that it also travelled in time, you know,” she said after a long silence.

“What?”

“When I turned you down, and you came back and said that the TARDIS also travelled in time, and I came with you. It wasn’t because of what you said.”

“It wasn’t?”

She shook her head. “The moment I said no, I knew it was a mistake. I watched the TARDIS disappear and I really knew that I had made a terrible mistake. You could have come back and said absolutely anything, really, and I would have come running.”

“You saved my life, that day.”

“I think maybe we saved each other.”

“Any regrets?” he asked.

“None. I couldn’t have asked for a better life.”

Tears welled in his eyes. He lifted her cautiously, resting her head on his chest and wrapping an arm around her thin shoulders. “I’m going to miss you so much.”

“I’m sorry I won’t be here to miss you back.” She spoke so quietly that he could barely hear her. “I’m sorry that I’ve given you so much pain.”

“Oh, Rose. What you’ve given me is so much joy. More joy than I thought was possible in a thousand years, much less in sixty-eight.”

“When you go back out there, into the stars, will you … promise me you won’t be alone.”

“I promise.”

“And tell them about me. Your companions, in the future, tell them about your silly, human wife.”

He nodded, speech deserting him.

“Go back to New Earth every now and then, to remember our wedding.”

He swallowed around a lump in his throat and smiled in spite of himself. “You seem to have a lot of instructions for me. Should I be taking notes?”

She laughed, an almost-inaudible hiss. “Shut up.”

He could feel the weak thump of her heart against his chest. “Are you warm enough?”

“’M fine.”

He brought his other arm around her and threaded his fingers into her hair. “I’ll tell them all about you, Rose. Your ability to find trouble will serve as a cautionary tale for everyone I meet from now on.”

“Quite right.”

“And I’ll tell them of your kindness, and your compassion, and that I loved you more than anyone I’d ever known.”

“You? So unashamedly romantic?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. The universe won’t forget Rose Tyler, I swear.” He kissed her forehead. “Nor will I. Not for one day, not for the rest of my life.” Several quiet moments passed, and he looked up at the stars, counting the ones he’d never taken her to. “It wasn’t enough time.”

“It never could have been, for you.”

“No.”

“The universe … it’s so beautiful.” She took a deep breath. “Thank you for showing it to me.”

“I think you’ll find that you were the one who showed it to me, love,” he said as he ran his hand over her hair.

She didn’t respond, and he thought for a moment that she had fallen asleep, but he gradually became aware of how very still she was. And he had a decision to make, because he could rush her inside and restart her heart. He had all the equipment to keep her alive, not forever, but for a little longer. He could hook her up to more machines, machines that would breathe for her and feed her and hydrate her. But she didn’t want that; it was why she had wanted to be in the garden. She had known the end was here, and she had wanted to spend her last moments in his arms, under the stars.

He pressed his lips to the top of her head and didn’t move, other than to keep stroking her hair.


	4. Chapter 4

Jack went out to him an hour later. 

He tried to ease Rose’s body away from the Doctor but he would have none of it, and insisted on carrying her back inside himself. Jack watched as he laid her out reverently on their bed, smoothing her hair and straightening her pyjamas and removing the needle and tape from the top of her right hand. He reached into a small wooden box on the nightstand and pulled out a chain with a small Yale lock key and a silver ring on it, and slipped it around Rose’s neck. “Her fingers had gotten too thin for her wedding ring, so she put it on the chain with her TARDIS key,” he explained in a flat voice.

With a few murmured words to the nurse, Jack went up to the bed and put a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “Let me get you a drink.”

The fight seemed to have drained out of him, and he followed Jack passively into the kitchen, slumping down at the table. Jack busied himself with finding glasses and whiskey and ice. He was relieved to have the Doctor to worry over; it allowed him to shove his own grief aside, to be brought out later when there was time. When Jack put a glass down in front of him, the Doctor stared at the amber liquid, expressionless.

“So many times I thought I’d lost her, over the years. Thought she’d be destroyed by absorbing the Time Vortex, thought she’d be lost in the Void, thought the Master would kill her. So much danger. You’d think I would be prepared for it. I’m not prepared in the slightest.”

“No one ever is,” Jack responded, sitting beside him.

The Doctor started. “We should call Jenny, and there are other people—”

“I’ll take care of it.”

He slumped down again, still staring at the table. Jack took a sip of his own drink and waited. “She knew it was over,” the Doctor said finally. “Made me take her into the garden, so that … so that we could say goodbye.”

“Rose had a long life, and it ended on her own terms. That’s good.”

“Yeah.” He sounded unconvinced.

 

*** 

 

Jack made all the arrangements for Rose’s body to be transported to England, where she would be buried. The Doctor wanted no funeral, but he was insistent on a marker for her grave, which surprised Jack slightly.

The next day Jenny used the TARDIS to fetch some of their friends, former companions who were still alive in the timeline that they had lived by. There was no Sarah Jane, no Martha, no Donna, for Rose had outlived all of them. There were newer faces, people who had never known the Doctor without Rose at his side. The sight of him without her was almost beyond comprehension to them. 

Jack brought everyone together that evening and suggested that they tell some of their favourite stories about Rose. He started by talking about the first time he saw Rose, hanging above World War II London from a barrage balloon in a Union Jack T-shirt. He spoke about how they had flirted and made the Doctor jealous, and how quickly it became clear to Jack that the Doctor and Rose were totally wrapped up in each other. Others chimed in with their own stories, and bottles of wine were opened, and soon the room was filled with laughter. The Doctor slouched in a wing-backed chair and listened, a glass of wine in his hand, undrunk. He smiled at the right moments and even laughed once or twice, but mostly he stared into space.

At a lull in the conversation, when most of the small group were at least a couple of sheets to the wind, the Doctor spoke up, quietly at first:

“She thought weddings were stupid.”

“What did you say, Dad?” Jenny asked carefully.

He sat up. “She told me weddings were stupid. And I agreed; I was completely satisfied with things as they were. Until Donna kicked me in the bum, the way she used to do, and said I should marry her anyway. At first, I balked. I didn’t want to think about this,” he said, gesturing vaguely at them. “I didn’t want to admit to myself that I would someday watch her die.”

“What changed your mind?” Jack asked.

“I realized that she deserved better from me. She deserved to hear that commitment from me, as unpleasant as the eventual outcome was – is.”

“I used to catch her sometimes,” said an older woman named Frieda who had travelled with them for several months, many years before, “looking at that wedding ring and smiling. I think you had been married for at least thirty years by that point, and still she grinned like a teenager.”

“So if she thought weddings were stupid, what did you do?” asked someone else.

“We had a wedding of our own devising. Just Rose and me, under an open sky. I promised to cherish every day we had together.” 

“And you did,” Jenny said.

The Doctor set his glass down and ran his hands through his hair, then stood up. “I’m going to bed,” he said abruptly, and left the room.

 

***

 

“It’s all arranged,” Jack said when he found the Doctor sitting in the bedroom. It was spotless, with Rose’s things packed into boxes and many of the Doctor’s belongings back on the TARDIS already. “Jenny’s taking everyone home, and we ordered the grave marker, just like you asked.”

“Good, that’s good. I’m going to regenerate.”

Jack sputtered. “What? Are you hurt?”

“Not yet.”

Jack sat next to him and grabbed his arm. “What are you saying? That you’re going to commit suicide?”

The Doctor stood and stepped away, waving his hand dismissively. “No. Well, not exactly. I may be able to do it without doing any harm to myself at all. There were ways. Romana did it. Of course, she was a lot younger than me. Still, I may be able to.”

“I don’t understand.”

The eyes that met Jack’s were desperate. “I can’t stay like this. I can’t be … it’s too much, it hurts too much. If I regenerate, it might not hurt this much.”

“ _Might_ not.”

The Doctor shrugged. “When I regenerated into this body, she was there. And I was so completely and hopelessly in love with her, and I became the way I am to … match her, I guess. To be _hers_. It’s only right that this incarnation of me should pass away right along with her.”

“So what will you become if you regenerate when you’re full of grief?”

“Hardened to it, I hope.”

“Look, just don’t do it now. Wait a little while. A few weeks, a few months.”

The Doctor was shaking his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t bear this!” the Doctor shouted, but then immediately his voice softened. “It’s like I still have the taste of her in my mouth. I … I look at my hands and I remember what they looked like, trailing over her skin. I can’t be this man anymore, Jack. It’ll drive me insane.”

“That’s exactly why I want you to wait. I don’t trust that you’re thinking clearly right now. I don’t trust that …”

“What?”

Jack sighed. “In your state of mind, I don’t trust that you won’t harm yourself and then fail to regenerate.”

“I’m not going to off myself, Jack.”

“Swear it to me.”

“I swear. This isn’t about dying, it’s about starting over. If I’m going to go on living, go on travelling, then I need a fresh start. I need to close the book on this chapter of my life.”

“Are you sure?”

He met Jack’s eyes. “I’m sure.”

“Well,” Jack said, putting his fists on his hips, “are you going to be good-looking?” 

The Doctor smiled for first time that day. “I will do my level best.”

 

*** 

 

They sat on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Above their heads, a meteor shower lit up the sky. The man watched Jenny for a long time after she stopped speaking. “So what happened? Did he regenerate?”

“Yes.” 

He took her hand. “And did it help?”

She smiled wistfully. “Maybe a little. I mean, he didn’t have to look at Rose’s Doctor in the mirror anymore. He didn’t have to wear the same clothes that she had taken off of him when they were lovers. But I think he hurt just as much.”

“How do you know all of that? Some of the details you told me, you couldn’t have witnessed.”

“My father showed it all to me,” she said, tapping her temple. “Many years later, he showed me his memories of that time.”

“Why? Some of it was very private. His last moments with his wife, why did he want you to know about that?”

Jenny shrugged. “I’m still not entirely sure. Maybe he didn’t want me to make the same mistakes he did.”

The man smiled at her, and her heartbeats sped up against her will. “Or maybe he wanted you to make _exactly_ the same mistakes he did, but with your eyes open.”

She couldn’t help but smile in return. “Maybe.”

“I know that you’re going to outlive me. I know my life is a blink of an eye to you in some ways. But, I mean, don’t you think it’s worth it? After all, it’s better—”

“If you say it’s better to have loved and lost, I’m going to smack you.“

“Please, Jenny, have I ever been that cheesy?”

“Yes,” she said, giggling. “Many, many times.”

He shoved her playfully. “Fine. Sometimes clichés become clichés because they’re true.”

“I guess.” She put her head on his shoulder, and they watched the meteor shower for a while longer. Finally, Jenny leaned up and gave him a long, slow kiss. It took her breath away, as it always did. After several moments, she broke the kiss and touched her forehead to his. “How long are you going to stay with me?” she asked.

“Forever. I’m going to stay with you for all of my forever.”

Jenny met his eyes, this human man whom she had tried not to love. “Then I guess we’ll have to make sure that it’s worth it.”

 

_END_


End file.
